Call screening is a telephony service that offers call recipients the ability to listen to a voice message as the voice message is being deposited by a caller. In traditional telephony paradigms, a telephone answering device (TAD) is located at a call recipient's location to enable a call recipient to screen incoming calls. The TAD can record a voice message left by a caller and concurrently play the voice message out loud. If the call recipient is present while calling party is connected, the call recipient may listen to the voice message and identify the calling party without indicating to the calling party that the call recipient is present. In this manner, the call recipient may “screen” the call, taking the call based on recognition of the voice of the caller, or based on the contents of the deposited voice message.